As someone who works in the legal field, this sounds like an abuse of discretion to write kids up for playing basketball, regardless of what some old blue hair has to say about it. If the court system is cluttered up by kids being kids, then the whole system is a failure. Time, tax payers money, etc, gets wasted on something that should have been let go through the discretion of an officer of the court. It even stems further than that, if a lower court judge abuses his discretion at trial, even he can be reprimanded by a judge in a higher court on appeal. Lawyers can also be reprimanded for abuses in discretion.
At the end of the day, we are all human beings and if we work in the justice system, at any level, our discretion is key to keeping the courts running smoothly and efficiently. Some college kids having a party should be given a warning, or even two really, to keep things under control. Coming in guns blazing like the SS and throwing everyone to the ground is clearly an abuse of discretion. Granted, I don't know all of the facts, but the little that I do know seem nothing out of the ordinary for any college kid on any campus in the nation. From what I remember about the KPD is that they were quite over zealous when I was there, they seemed too afraid to pursue real threats of crime (because let's be honest, Knoxville does have some shady surrounding areas), but they had no problem picking on all the "college boys" for some immature fun. I think the whole department deserves to be investigated. When people are running around shooting folks, carjacking folks, murdering folks; a police department should probably focus more on that and not call every available unit to a college party. It's just rediculous. I think they should make it a requirement for cops to have degrees, then some of this could be avoided. It was clear the amount of "good ole boy" jealousy against the "college boys" that spurs a lot of these arrests.
To the current students, I suggest writing some letters to say you don't feel safe and the police are obviously focusing their efforts in the wrong places. When I was a student at UT, it was during the time when Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom were brutally murdered. When a friend of mine got arrested for jaywalking a few days later, I wrote letters to the university, KPD, UTPD, and the entire city council. I received responses from all of them. They were equally appalled and understood that the students should be the protected class of people in the campus area, not the class of people who get harassed by cops.... /rant.
